Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XVI.djvu/302

 282 VEHSE the 14th and 15th centuries the free judges were more than 100,000 in number, scattered over every part of Germany. The condemna- tion of an offender by a Vehmic court was known to the whole brotherhood in a very short time ; and if it were the father, brother, or son of one of the initiated who was con- demned, he not only might not warn him of his danger, but was bound to aid in putting him to death under penalty of losing his own life. When slain he was to be hanged on the nearest tree, nothing of value which he might have about him being removed, and a knife being thrust into the earth near him as an indi- cation that his death was the result of a sen- tence of the Vehmic court. A power so for- midable, and exercised under such obligations of secrecy, soon raised the hostility of those who feared becoming its victims, as well as of those who saw in it an engine capable of ter- rible oppression. In 1371 the emperor Charles IV., in an instrument known as the public peace or pact of Westphalia, stipulated for the recognition of the Vehm ; but in the next cen- tury the number of its opposers greatly in- creased, and in 1461 an association was formed among the cities and princes of Germany and the cantons of Switzerland to resist the free judges, and to require that the trial of accused persons should take place in' open day. In 1495 Maximilian I. established a new criminal code, which materially weakened the power of the Vehmic courts; and in the 16th century they were but seldom held. The last public sitting was in 1568, near Celle; but there were secret sittings of the court in the 17th and 18th cen- turies, and according to Kohlrausch even as late as 1811, in Miinster. But they ceased to excite terror or to exert any considerable influ- ence before the close of the 17th century. Kopp, Verfdssung der heimlichen Qerichte in Westphalen (Gottingen, 1794); Hutter, Das Vehmgericht des Mittelalters (Leipsic, 1798); and Wigand, Das Vehmgericht Westphalem (Hamm, 1825). VKIISK, Karl Ednard, a German historian, born in Freiberg, Saxony, Dec. 18, r802, died near Dresden in June, 1870. From 1825 he held office in the department of archives at Dresden, and became its chief in 1833. In 1828 appeared his Gexchichte Kaiser Otto's des Grown (2d ed., 1865), and in 1834 his Tafeln der Welt- und CulturgescJiichte. He accompanied the separa- tist Stephan to the United States about the be- ginning of 1839, but returned home at the end of that year, and after travelling in Europe settled in Berlin. He was imprisoned six months and expelled from Prussia for dis- paraging the royal family in his Geschichte der deutschen Hofe seit der Reformation (48 vols., Hamburg, 1851-'8 ; partly translated into Eng- lish by Demmler, 1854-'6). He became a nat- uralized Swiss in 1857, and during his last years lived alternately in Italy and Saxony. VEII, one of the 12 cities of the Etruscan confederation, the largest and most powerful VEINS of all, on the Cremera, a small affluent of the Tiber, near the present town of Isola Farnese, about 10 m. N. N. W. of Rome. Its territory seems to have extended from the mouth of the Cremera to the Ciminian forest, and from Alt. Soraote to the Tyrrhenian sea. Veii was a great city long before the foundation of Koine, and was for centuries her rival in power, until it was destroyed about 396 B. C. by the Ro- mans under Camillus. When soon after Rome was destroyed by the Gauls under Brennus, the Roman people were prevented by Camillus from removing to Veii and rebuilding it in- stead of their own city. It was repeopled un- der Augustus, but relapsed into decay, and disappeared from history. VEIN, in mineralogy. See MINE. VEINS, the name applied to four systems of blood vessels, differing in structure, course, and function, and having in common only the char- acter of conveying blood toward and not from the heart. These systems are the common systemic, the portal, the pulmonary, and the umbilical, the first two circulating impure or venous, and the last two pure or arterial blood. As to the special anatomy of the general venous circulation, it will be sufficient to say here that all the veins from the lower limbs and the pel- vic and abdominal organs carry their contents into the inferior vena cava, and those of the head, upper limbs, and thorax into the superior vena cava; that those two great vessels pour their blood into the right auricle of the heart, whence it enters the right ventricle, to be sent by this through the pulmonary artery to the lungs for purification, returning arterial by the pulmonary veins to the left auricle, and thence by the left ventricle and aorta over the body. The principal superficial vein of the side of the neck is the external jugular, in which vene- section is occasionally performed; it is very conspicuous in some persons during violent agitation of body or mind. The deep-seated internal jugular, by the side of the carotid ar- tery, receives the blood from the sinuses of the brain ; the median basilic at the bend of the elbow is the classical one for venesection, being very accessible and of considerable size; the longest vein in the body is the internal saphena, extending from below the ankle joint to within about an inch of the groin; the other veins as to their course generally follow the arteries; the heart has its own system of veins, not com- municating with the vena3 cavro, but opening directly into the right auricle. These systemic veins, as they are called, correspond to the branches of the aorta, and grow larger and larger toward the heart. The portal veins col- lect the blood from the small vessels of the abdominal viscera into one, the vena portro, which subdivides like an artery within the liver. In the pulmonary circulation, by a con- tradiction in terms, the vessel called the artery carries venous blood, and the veins arterial blood. Veins are generally thinner, less elas- tic, and of larger calibre than the correspond-